


The Arm's Race

by LassieLowrider



Category: Skulduggery Pleasant - Derek Landy
Genre: F/M, Gen, Heists, Pre-Relationship, What more can you want?, if you're wearing those glasses, otherwise they're just friends, puns
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-07
Updated: 2019-01-07
Packaged: 2019-10-06 06:26:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,682
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17340245
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LassieLowrider/pseuds/LassieLowrider
Summary: “No, ‘bomb’ isn’t hip either.” Valkyrie shook her head, not quite believing this was a conversation they were having at a crime scene.“No, there’s a bomb!” She whipped around to look at Skulduggery, he was in turn looking down at a nondescript box.Or; Skulduggery loses his arm. Nothing goes entirely according to plan, except when it does.





	The Arm's Race

**Author's Note:**

  * For [eyesocketsandsuits (writingandchocolatemilk)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/writingandchocolatemilk/gifts).



> I don't own anything, except for the villain. I don't want him, so he's free to a home. Kudos to Landy (and his ghost writer tbh).

When Valkyrie managed to pry her eyes open, it felt like she’d just accomplished a Herculean task. The sound of the explosion was still bouncing around her skull, making it feel like it was reverberating. It wasn’t a comfortable feeling, she noted absently.

“Ow,” she said, staring up at the sky. She was relatively certain there’d been a ceiling there, earlier.

Now there was Skulduggery, instead. Well, there were two Skulduggerys leaning over her. Two is always better than one. She felt like giggling but couldn’t quite remember how.

“We need to move.” Valkyrie tried shaking her head, to see if that would clear things up. It didn’t, mostly because she instantly got a splitting headache. However, it did make the two Skulduggerys into a single one, and that brought along a whole different issue.

“Skulduggery, where’s your arm?” Indeed, one arm of his suit jacket was dangling by his side, clearly empty.

“I… think I lost it?”

Valkyrie sat up from where she’d been laying on the ground, immediately regretting it due to how the world spun around her.

She looked at Skulduggery. He looked back with, she was quite pleased to notice, a concerned tilt to his head. Of course, he may have been more concerned about his missing arm than about her, but she could dream.

“You’re looking quite… green?” he carefully ventured to say, and she decided it was concern for her after all. She then postponed that thought so she could turn her head far enough that she didn’t throw up on herself.

**Five minutes earlier**

“What kind of name is Atomik Inferno, anyway?” Valkyrie grumbled, stuffing her hands as deep into her coat pockets as she could. While they technically were indoors, the abandoned warehouse they were investigating wasn’t very warm.

“He’s an Adept specialised in fire, as far as the intel goes,” Skulduggery replied, not addressing the ridiculous name at all. She couldn’t decide if she wanted to keep bashing the small-time criminal they were looking for, or deride her partner for the language he used. She snorted, the chance to take the mickey winning out as per usual.

“Intel? Who are you and what have you done with my partner?” They split up, going down on either side of one of the enormous shelves, trying to find anything to give them a clue where Atomik Inferno was hiding.

“What? Isn’t that what is ‘hip’ to say, anymore?” Even though she didn’t see him, she could very well picture the mischievous, playing-at-hurt head tilt he was doing. Since he couldn’t see her, either, she allowed herself a fond eye roll before she replied.

“Honestly, Skulduggery, I don’t think intel has ever been ‘hip’ to say.” She stopped, mid-step, listening intently, thinking she heard something. After deciding it was nothing, she continued, both her stride and her sentence. “And ‘hip’ is certainly not ‘hip’ to say.”

“Bomb.”

“No, ‘bomb’ isn’t hip either.” Valkyrie shook her head, not quite believing this was a conversation they were having at a crime scene.

“No, _there’s a bomb!_ ” She whipped around to look at Skulduggery, he was in turn looking down at a nondescript box.

Then, everything was an inferno.

The last thing she heard before blacking out was a high-pitched giggle.

**The next day**

“I have an idea.”

“Is it a good idea?”

“I think so, but…”

“But…?”

“You won’t like it,” Valkyrie confessed, already bracing for the reaction ahead.

“…out with it.”

“We’re gonna have to break into the school.”

“ _What_.”

“Yeah, that’s what I thought you’d say.”

“Why would this necessitate breaking into the _school_ , of all places? The morgue, that would be explanatory, but the school?”

“The skeleton they have in the biology lab is said to be real.”

“Said to be.” Valkyrie had never heard anyone use absolutely no inflection before. In fact, if Valkyrie hadn’t seen Skulduggery talk with her own two eyes, she would’ve said it was written, considering how flat it was.

“It’s not – not quite a guarantee. But! We can check. And also, the morgues doesn’t tend to have easily accessible _arms_.”

“There has to be some other way than breaking into a school _or_ robbing a morgue.”

“Well, we’ve never been grave robbing, and I feel that’s a life skill I desperately miss.” Skulduggery made a motion that even Valkyrie had trouble interpreting, despite her familiarity with him. On someone with a proper face, she imagined it would’ve translated into an ugly grimace.

“…we’re breaking into the school.”

**That evening**

“I had a thought earlier,” Valkyrie said, watching as Skulduggery valiantly tried to pick the lock of the biology classroom onehandedly. It wasn’t going very well.

“Just the one?” he returned, making an aborted motion she’d quickly realised was him trying to use his missing arm.

“Haha. Very funny. Anyway, what happens if you activate your façade now, missing an arm?” She watched as Skulduggery sighed with his whole body before turning to face her.

“This happens.” With that, he activated the façade, and Valkyrie couldn’t decide if she wanted to laugh or feel sick.

Laughing won out.

She’d seen the second Harry Potter film, back when that came out, so she did actually have something to compare it to. Where Skulduggery’s left hand should’ve been was just what looked like an empty, particularly realistic looking _flesh glove_. It flopped around when he tried to move it.

She tried to be quiet, they were after all breaking and entering, but the hand and the downtrodden look on Skulduggery’s face only led to her howling with laughter.

“I’m sorry, I just…” she wheezed, bent double and clutching her stomach. “That’s disgusting and I don’t know what to do with this information.”

“Oh no, that’s fine, laugh at my misfortune,” Skulduggery grumbled, deactivating his façade and turning back to the lock. She was still wheezing when he finally managed to finagle it open.

When they entered the classroom, she expected the skeleton – named McCoy – to be in the closet, where he was always kept when she was at school. The sight that met her, however, was entirely different, and almost enough to have her collapse to the floor, laughing.

Skulduggery attempted to cross his arms over his chest, waiting for her to regain her composure, but quite quickly realised that it didn’t have quite the same effect when one-armed. Rubbing at where the bridge of his nose would be if he had a face, he couldn’t help but see the ridiculousness of the situation, and start chuckling too.

Soon, he was bent double as well, the laughter overwhelming both of them.

“You didn’t – you didn’t say it was an _officer_ skeleton!” he finally managed to get out, starting the two of them off again.

Indeed, the skeleton was dressed in an old police uniform, looking more or less like a hodgepodge of different uniforms of the 20th century. To complete the picture, however, it wasn’t wearing a police hat. Instead, on its skull someone had placed an old straw sunhat.

Carefully avoiding looking at each other and the skeleton, Valkyrie and Skulduggery did manage to more or less stop laughing, the odd giggle notwithstanding.

“It feels wrong, somehow, stealing from a police officer,” she said, hands on her hips. She was standing shoulder to empty shoulder with Skulduggery and could feel him shake with the intermittent giggle. She shrugged. “Oh well, needs must and all that.”

Skulduggery broke down again, near howling with laughter. A smug little spark of enjoyment lit inside her at the sound. It was rarely heard, and being able to bring it out made her quite pleased with herself.

It didn’t take them long to dismantle the skeleton, the arm of the uniform jacket gaping empty when they were done. Valkyrie made an effort to tuck it up and make it look not as suspicious, all while Skulduggery tried to attach his borrowed arm.

“We’re returning it, when we find my real one, of course,” he said, sighing in relief when the arm clicked into place. The hand clacked weirdly when he moved the fingers of it. “That will ease up, you’ll see. It’ll be just like mine, soon enough.”

“Great! Let’s get out of here.” That said and done, they moved out of the classroom. When they closed the door, they heard a great clattering noise behind it – quite like a one-armed skeleton, dressed in a mismatched police uniform, falling to the floor. They looked at each other, slowly looked back at the door, and then simultaneously decided they hadn’t heard anything, and as quickly and quietly as possible left the school.

When they came back to Cemetery Road (Valkyrie _still_ couldn’t let it go, that her living skeleton partner lived at _Cemetery Road_ ), it was to a broken window. The cause, they quickly ascertained, was the brick thrown through it. Of course, whoever had thrown the brick – twine and a cliché note included – probably needed glasses. They’d namely thrown it through the _shed_ window.

“This has got to be the most incompetent villain we’ve faced,” Valkyrie said, looking at the brick. Skulduggery was in the process of untying the twine – made easier due to having two arms again, but the new arm didn’t seem to be agreeing with him entirely.

“Really?” he replied, scoffing at the twine when he managed to untie it. There was a certain feeling of _take that_ to the scoff, and sometimes Valkyrie wondered if he really was over 400 years old. “Here, hold this.”

“…I forgot Scapegrace. This is the _second_ most incompetent villain,” she said, thoughtfully. She looked at the brick she’d been handed, and then back at Skulduggery. “What am I supposed to do with this?”

“He did manage to get away with my arm.” The fingers of Skulduggery’s borrowed hand started snapping. Both of them looked at it. “Well, it’s not a perfect fit.”

“As if it’s hard to steal one of your limbs. A gnome stole your head!” She waved the brick threateningly at the borrowed arm, which seemingly understood what she meant, since it stopped snapping.

“Actually, it was a goblin. And not a lone one, either! Nay, it was a whole _band_ of them!” Having said his piece, Skulduggery returned to studying the note. “I can’t make head or tails of this?”

“Give it here, let me see.” Valkyrie absentmindedly tucked the brick under her arm before grabbing the note out of his hand. “Oh, this is easy.”

“It’s unintelligible and makes no sense.”

“Only if you’re looking at it wrong.” Clearing her throat dramatically, she read the contents of the note out loud. “If-yay ou-yay ant-way o-tay ee-say our-yay arm-yay again-yay, ome-cay o-tay e-thay ain-tray ation-stay efore-bay I-yay et-gay ere-thay.”

Skulduggery didn’t say anything or react in any way, just looked at her. His usually blank face was, somehow, even blanker.

“It’s pig Latin! Haven’t you ever used it?” She could only look at him in disbelief when he slowly shook his head.

“Oh. Well, see, once again, you’re really lucky to have me! It says _if you want to see your arm again, come to the train station before I get there._ ” Valkyrie looked at him, smiling smugly. The smile slowly fell as she realise what she’d just said.

“Let’s go!” they said in unison, turning on their heels and more or less running to the car.

When they got to the train station, long since closed down, the only thing there was a rubber chewing bone – also this with a note tied around it. While Skulduggery was emotionless, looking at the note, the borrowed arm shook its fist at the sky.

“This time it’s a riddle – _oh, to see, stars shining, find the arm and stop whining_ – it’s at the observatory.” When they returned to the car, Skulduggery wrangled his incensed arm under the seatbelt, grumbling all the way. “Atomik Inferno is possibly more incompetent than Scapegrace. It’s not even a _good_ riddle.”

Once at the observatory, there was nothing to see but a flyer for Shakespeare in the park. Deciding it was probably the open air theatre in the outskirts of the town that Inferno meant, they again piled into the car and went on their merry way. The mood in the car couldn’t be called merry, exactly. More… merciless. Valkyrie was mostly amused, at least when she wasn’t scared for her life. Skulduggery was incensed for the very same reason. His borrowed arm and he didn’t quite get along, and the arm had very determined opinions about how to change gears.

It was the first time since Skulduggery learnt how to drive that he ever stalled a car. He was unhappy, to say the least.

When they arrived at the park, the sight that greeted them was a man in an enormous, throne-like chair. When Skulduggery stopped the car, however, Valkyrie only had one thing to say.

“I expected him to be… bigger?”

“With a name like Atomik Inferno, it can go either way. This time it was, much like Scapegrace’s ‘Killer Supreme’, just a way to – hype himself up.”

Indeed, the man – positively identified as Atomik Inferno, the Fire adept who stole Skulduggery’s arm – was tiny. At most a couple of inches over five feet, the chair that had from a distance seemed to enormous, now simply seemed slightly oversized.

They looked at each other, longsuffering. Both were thinking much the same thing – along the lines of _we’ve saved the world, and this is what we’ve been reduced to?_

On mutual agreement, and with the familiarity that came with working with each other for years, they split up.

When Skulduggery reached the side of the theatre, Atomik looked up from where he was scratching his leg with a detached skeletal arm. Skulduggery made a mental note to boil it before attaching it again, no matter how long he’d have to stand the misbehaving borrowed arm for it.

“Do you know where that’s been?” he called up to the self-styled villain. Seeing the hand of the borrowed arm start twitching, he hurried to stuff it into his pocket. It rankled, knowing it ruined the lines of his suit, but he nevertheless managed to make the motion look effortless.

“Do you?” the small man gaily called back, flipping Skulduggery the bird with his own hand. Had Skulduggery had eyes, they would have narrowed. Atomik stood up, revealing that he was wearing a velvet cloak, and started orating. “So, this is what it’s come to – the great skeleton detective, disarmed by little old me. I mean, you look alright, but you could’ve visited a second hand store.”

He looked at Skulduggery expectantly, waiting for a response of some kind. When he didn’t get it, he rolled his eyes and sighed exasperatedly.

Atomik looked very surprised when he slowly fell to the ground, mouth still frozen like he was about to start speaking any moment. Valkyrie stood behind him, an unimpressed look on her face and the brick Atomik had thrown through Skulduggery’s shed window held aloft in her hand.

“You should worry more about me, Skulduggery’s… h _arm_ less.” She grinned at Skulduggery, who activated his façade just so he could roll his eyes at her. Dropping the brick to the ground, just barely missing Atomik’s head, she instead picked up Skulduggery’s arm.

Heading over to the edge of the theatre, she jumped off the stage, landing next to Skulduggery. She tried to hand the arm to him, but he held his hands up in aversion.

“I don’t know where that’s been and honestly before I’ve cleaned it I’m not putting it back.” Valkyrie got a disgusted look on her face, quickly holding the arm at arm’s length.

“Oh, that’s just _disgusting_.”

“Imagine how I feel, it’s my arm!”

So bickering, they cuffed the small-time villain Atomik Inferno, brought him to the car and prepared to take him into official custody.

It was when they had almost reached the Sanctuary that Valkyrie brought it up again.

“You know, we’re going to have to break into the school again.”

The car stalled.

**Author's Note:**

> I'm cherrypicking a little here, what canon I use and not. Everything up to book 6 can be assumed as canon, the last three I'm iffy on due to it being a while since I read them, and the final two I've never read.
> 
> You can find me at tumblr [here](http://alpha-gayer.tumblr.com)!


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